India’s History in 24 hours: A beginners guide

India’s history is not a one-dimensional one that can be explained in a simple chronological fashion. The reason is that there were too many happening throughout the Indian subcontinent at the same time. It is impossible to cover the whole of history even in very short synopsis.
Assuming the known history of India 24 hours old, a condensed timeline is made! It is interesting to see the relative time periods in a very narrow time scale.
So a broad interesting historic points and periods are attempted. A very large number of kingdoms and events are not included in this list. Also some explanations are given for the early eras of her history.

The Indus valley civilization spread across the northwestern part of the Indian subcontinent. Probably this is the largest known ancient civilization and the youngest to be discovered. The river Indus was the cradle of this civilization.

Mohenjo Daro was an important city. The hallmark of Indus valley civilization is that they had a system highly comprehensible to the modern day society. They had a well-developed system of town planning. The buildings and monuments at the center of the cities were decorative and sophisticated. Housing complexes were located at far places from the city center. The housed were mostly two storied.

There were grids of roads and the lanes. They had drain systems maintained by the town authorities.
They had a structured economy. Wheat and barley were cultivated extensively. Trade was a key profession. They used Indus River for transportation. Lothal was and ancient sea port
The development of art and skills are evident from the sophistication of toys for children.

I wish the Indus valley people had invented the MP3. If so the archeologists would have the chance to dig out a couple of CDs. It would have been definitely nice to hear how they sung their songs! But whatever they had been singing in 2000 years had gone with the winds and the humanity will never find an ancient sound.

Probably this was the first race to invade India. They came through the Hindu Kush Mountains (now in Afghanistan) and spoke Sanskrit. They settled at the valley. This era witnessed the transition of this nomad society to an agricultural based society.

Mostly during the fist half period they were confined to the valley. Aryans were not a monolithic army of invaders. There came through multiple routs at various points of time. Each established there own society. And during the later half they spread further eastward and southward, creating kingdoms at the gangetic planes and in the south.

Probably this formed the basis for numerous kingdoms and their rajas in India. These kingdoms were of various sizes and scattered all around the planes of India. Caste concept was introduced as a social system depicting who does what during this period.
Dravidian culture was established in the south.

During this period the culture and Gods of the Aryans and Indus’ got mixed.

The epic Mahabharatha depicts people’s life during this time period. The Mahabharatha war describes the conquest of Gangetic planes by the Aryan kings. It explains the numerous kingdoms and their stories. The wars in Ramayana depict the conquest of the Dravidians by the Aryans.

11 hours 30 minutes back: Buddha was born.

10 hours 30 minutes back: The Vedic Period (1000 to 600BC). The Mahabharata and the Ramayana were composed. Veda rhymes were composed during this time. Rig Veda was composed at the end of this era. Hinduism takes its present form.10 Hours back: Mauryan Empire established (322BC to 188BC) and they ruled the north part of India for about 35 minutes!

This was the first dynasty to form a larger Empire covering most of the north India and part of south. It was golden period during which the art, politics, philosophy etc in India made dramatic spread. This dynasty conquered smaller kingdoms and expanded its limits. Askoka, the last of the strong kings of this dynasty was heartbroken by the bloody war at Kalinga. He converted from Hinduism to Buddhism and used his influence to spread this religion all over central Asia. After him the Empire started disintegrating.

7 hours back: Gupta Empire was established. They ruled for about 1 hour.

King Chandragupta II united the north Indian kingdoms again to form a big empire again. His empire was expanded as far as Assam, Nepal, Orissa and towards the Pallava Kingdom in the south. This period is known as the classic period. 6 hours 30 minutes back: Huns from China invaded India and destroyed the Guptha Empire.

6 hours 20 minutes back: Arabs invaded India

5 hours 30 minutes back: Pal Empire of Bengal ruled (8 - 12AD) eastern India for 2 hours. They established the University of Nalanda, the first university to teach history!

4 hours 30 minutes back: The Hoysala dynasty(1000 -1346 A.D).

3 hours back: The Vijayanagar Empire (1336 - 1565 A.D). They lasted for about 1 hour 20 minutes before being destroyed by four Muslim kingdoms. They ruled the whole of south India and built the Hampi temples.

3 hours 30 minutes back: Qutab-Minar was commissioned!

2 hours 40 minutes back: Sikhism was born.

2 hours 20 minutes back: Vasco-da-Gama arrived at Calicut is Kerala.

2 hours 30 minutes back : The Mughal Empire established in India. Mughals ruled ( 1526-1707) the north India for 45 minutes.

1 hour 50 minutes back: Taj Mahal was commissioned!

1 hour 40 minutes back: Establishment of East India Company in India.

1 hour 25 minutes back: British Raj established in India. British ruled India for 50 minutes. 48 minutes back: The first Bollywood movie was born -Raja Harishchandra !!35 minutes back: India becomes an independent nation. And the rest is history!!

India has and extraordinary history. People from all over the world had wanted her for centuries. She had her own ways to lure people and frustrate them with her cultural booby trap.

Her geography merged with her history. Covered with three oceans at the bottom and the formidable Himalayas at the top. She made this as a gigantic melodrama theatre with no exit gate! Any one entered her was forced to make their own script and act, till they were tired and fallen!!

She never allowed any rulers to sit and watch the fun. She watched them with a mockery grin how they conquered her, decorated her and finally weakened and collapsed! She was selfish to the core. She only allowed people to read from her and not to write on to it.

Here she stands, with an enigmatic smile, frozen in time. Her roots running deep and far beyond the kingdoms and the rulers that ruled her.

the connection between Iranian deities and Indian(sanskrit 0nes) has been made though the connection to greek(devas<=> deius<=> zeus) or celtic gods( matres<=> matru- mother, Sydhe<=> siddhi (spirit) , naudha<=> neta(leader) etc) is only a small step...

Beachie Boy - great job but this was the funny line in the writeup!
Beach what DO you do for a living? I really want to know 'coz you have a gift for describing India in a ball-by-ball commentary way - you know what I mean? Really interesting manner. Do you ever submit articles to Sulekha.com? I think even your spelling and grammatical errors enhance the writing. I do like your gentle sense of humour! Another R.K. Narayanan in the making maybe and another Malgudi Days in the offing - maybe?